Adaptive Topology Optimization for Innovative 3D Printed Metamaterials

Abstract

An adaptive method for designing the infill pattern of 3D printed objects is proposed. In particular, new unit cells for metamaterials are designed in order to match prescribed mechanical specifications. To this aim, we resort to topology optimization at the microscale driven by an inverse homogenization to guarantee the desired properties at the macroscale. The whole procedure is additionally enriched with an anisotropic adaptive generation of the computational mesh. The proposed algorithm is first numerically verified both in a monoand in a multi-objective context. Then, a mechanical validation and 3D manufacturing through fused-model-deposition are carried out to assess the feasibility of the proposed design workflow.

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